


a fish sandwich with a side of eggs (or, you'll roe the day)

by FindingZ



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Developing Relationship, Eggs, Established Relationship, Family Planning, Just a whole lotta relationship dynamics, M/M, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation, Seadweller Biology, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 02:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19308925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FindingZ/pseuds/FindingZ
Summary: in which a lonely fish wants some baby fish, has some (not really) unexpected visitors, and ends up in a sandwich.





	a fish sandwich with a side of eggs (or, you'll roe the day)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lizardlicks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardlicks/gifts).



It’s the hunger that annoys you the most.

It’s only your second cycle, and you aren’t any more prepared for it than you were the first time it came around, when you were barely eleven sweeps. The first time it happened you hadn’t realized what was going on until you had cleared out your entire pantry in two nights and had ended up in line at the store dangerously close to sunrise with more groceries than you could ever afford.

This time you at least had the pan cells to recognize that your appetite was beginning to pick up about two days into it, so you were able to make the necessary preparations, going so far as to message Karkat and ask him if he could _maybe_ get Dave to make you some of that clam chowder that you got to try that one time you spent the evening at their hive.

(Dave brought a whole pot of it over himself two nights later. You think he might have personally be sent by the gods)

The all-consuming urge to consume anything and everything that isn’t immediately poisonous only lasts for a few nights, thankfully. After that, you usually spend the next perigee trying to scratch your abdomen to ribbons as the skin there grows and stretches as the eggs start to slowly grow inside you. You still have the faint scars from where you let your claws dig too deep the first time.

This time, as soon as the hunger hits you go out and buy the biggest jar of medicated cream you can find and leave it on the sidetable by your ‘coon, ready to slather your entire torso in it at a moment’s notice. You take to wearing your heavy coat everywhere, no matter the weather, just because it’s the only thing with pockets big enough to fit the container in.

“Ugh, sorry,” you tell Karkat one night, purposefully not meeting his curious gaze when you start rucking your shirt up. The booth that you’re both sitting at in the bar you’re in is far enough off to the side that you don’t _think_ anyone can see you. You unscrew the lid of the jar and wrinkle your nose at the strong smell of it. “If I don’t do this now I’ll have no skin left by morning.”

He raises his eyebrow over the rim of his drink. “Aren’t you a little young for your second cycle?”

You flush, curling over yourself so you can rub the cream into the (growing) folds of your stomach. “Yeah. It’s only been like three sweeps.”

He whistles, and props his chin on the heel of his palm. His cheeks are flushed mutant-red ( _human red_ , a small part of your pan whispers), and his gaze has taken on that glittery, intense quality that it does when he’s a few drinks away from you carrying him out of the establishment. “Does it hurt?”

“Nah. Itches like someone’s set my skin on fire, though.”

“Not _now,_ I meant later. When, you know.” He makes a swooping motion with his free hand. “It’s about to be over.”

“Oh. Not really? It’s…” You smooth your shirt back down and put the lid back on the lotion, trying to find the words to describe the process of expelling unfertilized eggs. “…weird. ‘S weird, but it’s not really painful.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” You fumble with your drink, tapping the rim of the glass against your teeth. You think about the last and first time you went through all this nonsense. You think about how you’d spent the entire last day in your ‘coon, curled up in sopor, holding the lifeless eggs in your hands, turning them over and over and wondering…wondering…

You can’t catch the heaving sigh that leaves your mouth in time. Karkat coughs a little, thumping his chest and slamming his glass back down.

“Wait, you’re thinking about…it? Grubs?”

You chew on your lower lip, trying to figure out how to string your words in order so Karkat doesn’t laugh at you, so you don’t sound like the naïve idiot everyone knows you are.

“…Yeah? I jus’.” You peel a bit of dead skin off and lick away the sting. “I never, I never wanted to before. I always wanted to, to have them be _mine_ , y’know? And not…”

“Not the mother grub’s.” Karkat finishes.

“Yeah. Or, sometimes you’d hear stories of eggs being _donated_ to the heiress as, to be part of the court. ‘Jus to be paraded around, bein’ shown off. And I didn’t want to risk that.”

“You want them to be yours.”

“Yeah.” You slide down in your seat, toying with the edge of your glass. “Is that weird? Is it wrong?”

Karkat’s face is…unusually soft. Softer than you’ve seen it directed at _you_ , anyway (you’ve seen that expression aimed at Dave, when neither of them realized you were there, and it’s stayed stuck in your pan ever since). “No, no it’s not. It’s not wrong.”

You let your thoughts drift, and allow yourself to think about chittering, high-pitched voices. Tiny claws skittering across the floor. Soft, almost inaudible snores next to you in the ‘coon at night.

“Well,” you say, and finish off the rest of your drink, “S’not like I have anyone to, uh, help make them, so. That’s a problem for future Eridan. Very future Eridan.”

Karkat says nothing, but his eyes don’t leave you for the rest of the morning.

 

* * *

 

You wake up the night after nursing a headache that you entirely deserve. Gods, you hadn’t intended to tell Karkat your stupid domestic fantasies. As if anyone would think _you_ of all people would make a good parent, after what you’ve done.

If Kanaya hadn’t managed to re-alchemize the matriorb, you would have been responsible for the extinction of your own species. Surely that magnitude of sin bans someone from ever producing their own offspring.

You drag yourself from the ‘coon and manage to find some leftovers sitting out to scarf down so your stomach doesn’t protest the handful of painkillers you swallow. You don’t even bother to get dressed, instead draping yourself over the pile of clean, unfolded laundry that you’d dumped on the floor two nights ago and then hadn’t had the motivation to put away.

When your head stops feeling like someone is slowly chiseling their name into the bone of your eye sockets, you lever yourself to your feet and check your messages. Not that you’re expecting anyone, and not that anyone ever messages you besides Karkat and sometimes Dave and sometimes, _sometimes_ Fef. It’s the one habit you haven’t been able to shake since your session – checking your messages before you do anything.

You have one message from Karkat, though, dated just a few minutes after you’d gotten home last morning. It’s…a voice message? That’s odd. You briefly debate ignoring it, just for a little while, because he’s never had anything to say that he felt was so important that he couldn’t just type it out at his usual speed of four hundred words per minute.

You don’t, though. You never would. Karkat is one of your best friends, and has _stayed_ with you. Despite everything you put him through, everything you did. He’s still willing to meet up with you once a perigee to get drunk and talk about everything. You had thought that maybe, just maybe when he and Dave had become a Thing, he wouldn’t bother to make time for you anymore, or maybe that Dave wouldn’t like that Karkat would go out and make himself vulnerable to you on the regular. But no. Dave is and was…fairly nonchalant about it. Like it was completely ordinary and unremarkable.

And maybe it is.

Still, all the evidence pointing towards you somehow _not_ being an immense bother and hindrance to your friends doesn’t make you any less anxious when you play the message.

There’s nothing at first, just an electronic crackling followed by what sounds like someone wrestling with a badly-positioned microphone. Then, you hear Dave’s voice coming through your speakers just a little bit muffled.

_“Hey Eri.  Uhh, I’m pretending to be Karkat because he’s currently dead to the world on the couch right now. He was gonna message you and tell you that, uh, shit where’s that note, what’d he say…”_

There’s a moment or two of rustling, and then Dave clears his throat. _“He wanted me to tell you that he wants you to come over to chill sometime next week. To ‘eat better food and drink better shit’, quote unquote. I’m gonna put a manners filter over that and say you’re humbly invited to our humble abode for some humble grub, neustra casa es su casa, etcetera etcetera. If you want. Just lemme know, or I guess let Karkat know. It’s chill if you don’t, no worries or pressure or….whatever. Yeah. Sleep tight Eri. Or ‘Dan. Would you hate it if we started calling you ‘Dan? I’m gonna guess prolly yeah, huh. Anyway. Yeah. G’night. Er, morning. Yeah. Later.”_

Huh.

You…don’t know how to react to that. You’ve never heard Dave get flustered like that before, let alone something as presumably humdrum as hanging out. It makes you nervous.

You probably shouldn’t be nervous. If there was something between the three of you worth being nervous about – had you said something wrong? Offended either of them somehow? Made them angry? Had they finally gotten tired of you? – they would tell you. You’d be able to tell, wouldn’t you? Karkat was physically incapable of keeping something like that from anyone. Dave wouldn’t even bother to consider keeping that sort of thing hidden and under wraps.

You type out a quick response in the affirmative and send it before you can proofread it. You decide you need a bath, and maybe a drink.

You probably shouldn’t be nervous.

(you’re inexplicably very, very nervous)

 

* * *

 

Your back starts hurting a few days after that, a tight, cramping feeling that makes you sluggish and stiff and unwilling to do much other than lay around staring out the window and dozing at odd hours of the day. Nothing seems to take the edge off, so you pass the next few days in a hazy fog. You debate messaging Karkat to cancel your upcoming outing – is it an outing if you’re at his hive? – but every time you start to type something out to him you think about how little you actually get off your ass and leave your hive to, to _do_ things. Things that don’t immediately contribute to your survival, like getting groceries or medicine.

You never get around to sending the message.

The night of, however, you wake up with cramps in your back that rival when you were bisected. The muscles are knotted up so tightly you can feel them throb in time with your heart, and the act of reaching for your palmtop on the table next to your ‘coon makes you need a good minute.

Make that several minutes.

And a few more for good measure.

You sit there in the sopor for another two hours, ultimately. Just the subtle shift of your back as you inhale _hurts_ , it hurts like nothing you’ve felt since the game, and you just really, really can’t move. You doze a bit, lightly, but always wake up when you inadvertently shift in your sleep and set off a wave of spasms.

You should probably message Karkat and tell him you can’t meet up.

It takes you awhile to _slowly,_ millimeter by millimeter, move yourself so you’re draped over the rim of the ‘coon, and another to reach (again) for your palmtop and bring up Karkat’s contact information. Your hands are shaking – you should probably get some water and something to eat, shit – and your eyes have that taken on that blurry unfocused quality that makes it difficult to do things like depth perception.

You fumble out something along the lines of _bck hurts cant mak eit thi smornin sry_ and drop the palmtop to the floor, sinking back into the sopor and curling up as much as your back will allow.

You sleep fitfully for awhile longer. When you wake up again, you can move (slowly) without your back seizing with cramps, so you haul yourself into the food preparation block and cram a few handfuls of _something_ into your mouth. You even manage a few gulps of water – gods your throat is so dry – before you teeter back to the sopor.

You spend the whole night that way, draped against the side of the ‘coon, watching videos on your palmtop until the angle exacerbates the pressure of the eggs inside you against already angry muscles and you have to stop in favor of curling up again.

You must have dozed off again, because you jolt up (ouch) to the sound of someone banging on your door. You don’t move, thinking that maybe you imagined it – no one has come to your hive in…a _long_ time.

The knocking gets louder. Fuck, you’re going to have to get up aren’t you.

It takes you awhile. You almost slip when pulling yourself over the rim, which sets you back a bit as another spasm travels up the length of your spine when you twist to steady yourself. You can’t manage bending over to pick up your clothes, so you settle for bundling yourself up in your (cold, damp) towel leftover from your last ablutions and call it good.

“I’m _COMIN’_ ,” you call out, irritated. The knocking literally _has not stopped_ , and is only getting more and more insistent.

When you manage to hobble out into the hall you hear the rattle of someone trying the handle, which, for _fucks_ sake, who the fuck has the nerve to try to just –

“—barge right in without even,” you yank open the door, still combing rapidly-evaporating sopor from your hair with your free hand, and stop. “Oh.”

Karkat is standing there, fist still raised. Behind him, Dave waves.

“Hey, dude. You weren’t answering your messages, so we figured we would bring the party to you.”

Karkat has a large bag slung over his shoulder that he adjusts, studiously not looking at you. He looks a little embarrassed. “The only time you’ve cancelled was when you got that horn infection and almost died, so. I wanted to…check in. If that’s okay.”

A globe of sopor that you missed during your hasty towel-off plops to the floor with a wet noise. “Uh.”

“If you want us to leave we can. We should have tried harder to get in touch with you before just waltzing ass-first over here. Sorry. That wasn’t great of us. Do you want us to…?”

“No!” You blurt, and feel yourself flush at how your voice cracked. “No, no, you’re fine,  s’fine, you can uh, come in? I’m not really…I mean, I’m a mess. The hive is a mess. S’been…a rough couple of nights.”

Dave snorts. “Yeah, don’t worry about that.”

Karkat makes a motion towards you. “So…?”

You’re in his way, you realize. “Yes! Yes, sorry.” You step back, trying not to make a face when the puddle of sopor squelches under your feet. He bustles past you, struggling with his bag a little (it looks heavy, what the hell did he haul over with him). Dave follows after him, nodding to you over the rim of his shades as he passes. They both make a beeline for the food preparation block without hesitation. You blink a little, still standing by the door with your hand on the knob. Karkat hasn’t been here in…sweeps, at least. He shouldn’t know where everything is.

And yet he does, apparently. When you trail after them into the block, Karkat is already rummaging through your cupboards and pulling things free seemingly at random. His bag is on the floor, and as you watch, Dave pulls your trash receptacle from nowhere and sweeps his arm across the counter, taking a few days worth of trash off the surface and into the bin before hoisting the bag up to sit on the newly available space.

You cringe, leaning against the doorframe. Your hive is so nasty that the first thing your friends do when setting foot in it is be taken over by the uncontrollable instinct to clean up after your sorry ass. “You don’t have to do, uh…what are you doing?”

Karkat, who has clambered up onto the counter directly and has his head buried in the cabinet, doesn’t answer you. Dave shrugs, though, and says, “helping you, duh. Sit down, dude, you look like you’re about to either pass out or shit yourself.”

“Um, I should probably…clothes? I’m not, sorry to, uh, make you see…this.” You flail a little bit at your exposed torso, clutching at the towel around your waist with your free hand.

You hear what sounds like a derisive snort from inside your cabinet. “If you think we give a tenth of a fuck about you being half-naked and covered in sopor, you’re in worse shape than we thought. Sit.”

You sit.

Karkat pulls his head out at last, a bag of…something in his hand. “When was the last time you went grocery shopping? Everything in here has fucking _dust_ on it.”

“Uh.” You wrack your pan. You haven’t gone this perigee, at least, because you haven’t been able to make the trip back with the extra weight you’ve put on. Did you go last perigee? You can’t remember. You must have. “I don’t know.”

The click of the magnetic latch when Karkat shuts the door and hops down makes you flinch. “Well, you at least have pasta.”

Dave looks over, eyebrows visible over the top edge of his shades. “Pasta? Aren’t seadwellers like, ninety percent carnivores?”

You can feel your face fins flaring out a bit in indignation. “Well, _yes_. That leaves ten percent room for other things.”

Karkat opens your cabinets again. “Pasta is definitely not ten percent of what you’ve got here. Try a hundred. Oh wait, ninety-five, my mistake.” He grabs something and waves it around too fast for you to see what it is. “You’ve got a singular bag of salmon jerky. What the _hell_ , Eridan?”

Oh, you’d wondered where that bag had gone. Your stomach cramps at the thought of actual protein.

“Well, you know.” You shrug. “Human pasta is cheap. And it doesn’t take any time to make, either.”

Karkat looks over sharply at Dave, who (presumably) looks sharply at him right back. There’s a beat of silence.

“Right.” Karkat elbows Dave out of the way and starts rummaging around in the bag on the counter. “Right, okay, so here’s how this is going to go. You’re going to sit there and rest, because you look like you got chewed up and shit out by Gl’bgolyb.”

“Thanks,” you fire back, feeling your fins flush. “Appreciate it.”

“It’s not an insult, dipshit. It’s the truth. You look terrible. So you’re going to sit there and we’re going to get you some actual food that isn’t going to make your immune system leech nutrients from your own fucking body, and you’re going to eat it. Then if you look more alive, I’ll break out the alcohol. Then you’re going to go to bed.”

They’re going to –

“You’re going to _cook_ for me?”

“Nah.” Dave folds his arms and leans back on the counter. “We’re just going to make all this good food and then eat it in front of you to make you feel even worse.”

You sneer at him. “Oh well if that’s all, then.”

Karkat baps you over the head with the bag of jerky. You rear back and try not to hiss at him when the slide of the rough plastic over your horns feels like he injected static right into your hindbrain. “Will you just shut up and let us keep you from getting troll scurvy? You get to do literally zero work, why the fuck are you bitching about it?”

He’s sounding…very pale. You glance at Dave a bit nervously, but he’s gone back to pulling odds and ends out of the bag – you think you see a package of fish, but that could just be your brain playing tricks on you. He doesn’t seem bothered by Karkat’s behavior, so you relax a little bit and try to consciously will your fins to relax and lick over your teeth to resist the urge to flash them in the face of Karkat’s presumptuousness.

“…Fine.”

He baps you again, but lighter. “You’re such a bitch when you’re carrying, gods.”

(He sounds…fond. You try not to fixate on it)

“Yeah well, you try being a fuckin’ saint while carrying a shitton of eggs around, see how nice and friendly you are then.”

“How does that work, anyway?” Dave has produced a frying pan from somewhere and is in the middle of fiddling with the flame underneath it.

“How does what work?”

He cranes his neck around to peer at you, then nods at the general vicinity of your stomach. “Eggs. You make more than one?”

“One?” You make a face. “If I only made one I’d call the drones to cull me myself. Only one egg? How the fuck would that make any of this worth it?”

“So how many you got then? On earth, when creatures laid eggs it was either just a few or, or literal thousands.”

“Thousands?” You wrap an arm around your stomach instinctively. “That sounds terrible.”

Dave shrugs. Karkat seems to be trying very hard not to grin at his back. “Well I don’t know, do I?”

That’s fair enough, you suppose. Humans and their live births, like something straight out of a horror film, gods. “It’s…different each time. For each troll too, I think? I don’t – I’m not about to go asking Fef or anything. But, um. Twelve or so? Give or take a few, if they all don’t die before they hatch. If, I mean,” you hunch over yourself, suddenly feeling unpleasantly vulnerable, “if they were to be fertilized, that is.”

Out of the corner of your eye you see Dave crane his head around to – you think – give Karkat some sort of look. Nobody says anything.

The silence drags on for about twenty seconds. Of course they don’t know how to respond – no one wants to hear your moping and moaning about how you want grubs. They came here to, to…cook for you?

Hm.

You clear your throat. “Anyway. Yeah. A dozen or so. If they aren’t, uh, fertilized, they’ll just be expelled and start to dissolve when they hit air.” You hold up your thumb and forefinger in front of your face. “Maybe about this big? They have a weird texture. Kinda like, like wet sand? But springy, like a mushroom. Not that they lasted long in my hand to really examine ‘em. Uh.” You’re rambling. Fuck. Karkat is inspecting your floor tiles very seriously. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Nah, don’t worry ‘bout it.” Dave unwraps a paper-covered package and, _oh_ , you haven’t smelled fresh fish in a _while_. “It’s interesting. Weird as fuck, but honestly I’m not as worked up as when Rose had to explain periods to Kanaya.”

“Periods? Of what?”

“Periods of periods. Google it or troll-Google it, just definitely don’t ask me.”

You think that sounds rather ominous, and chew on your lip while you consider what sort of strange human biological cycles could spark such a strong reaction from Kanaya. Then, as you watch, Dave makes a motion to plop a piece of the fish – the delicious-smelling, mouthwatering, glistening-in-the-light fish – into the now-hot pan. You stagger to your feet abruptly.

“What are you doing?”

Karkat snorts. “We’ll leave your portions raw, dumbass. Dave likes his fried to the furthest ring and back, calm down.”

You sit down again, feeling silly and embarrassed for an outburst caused by your own pickiness. You _can_ eat cooked fish, like any other seadweller. It isn’t as satisfying, but Dave is _making you food_ and here you are almost throwing a tantrum like a barely-molted wiggler. You chew on your lower lip. “Right. Thanks.”

Silence again, broken only by the crackle of frying fish. You watch Dave cut up the remaining raw pieces neatly into little cubes – cubes! Like you’re a wriggler who can’t even be trusted to take proper bites! – and arrange them on a plate.

Karkat sits down at the little table with you and rests his chin in his palm. “We have something to talk to you about.”

You blink at him. At the stove, Dave groans. “I thought we were going to wait until afterwards to talk to him.”

Karkat scowls over his shoulder. “Afterwards he’s going right back into his ‘coon! If he makes it through the meal without passing out it’ll be a miracle.”

“Uh.” You knot your fingers together in your lap. They want to talk with you? Have a serious discussion with you? About…what?

You wonder if it’s going to be some kind of intervention. _Eridan we care for you deeply and can’t stand that you’re wallowing half-starved in your own mess every week. Get your life together._

Or, maybe – your pump biscuit clenches once, twice in your chest. Maybe they’ve gotten tired of you. You _knew_ you wouldn’t be able to last forever until you said something to annoy them for the last time. What if, what if they came over to cook for you as some sort of apologetic “sorry but we’re platonically breaking up with you” thing?

A hand on your shoulder startles you out of the fog. Karkat has his head tilted and is looking at you in that sharp way he does. “I can see you freaking out. What are you thinking about?”

“Are you…” you swallow. “Did I do somethin’?”

“Huh? What the fuck makes you think – no, no, everything is fine. We’re _fine,_ Eri. You didn’t do anything, and we’re not going anywhere.” The hand on your shoulder is kneading at the muscle in a way that is making you want to lean into it and then keep leaning until you’re slumped against Karkat and maybe you can doze a bit. “It’s just…Dave and I have…well, not a proposition, exactly. Something like…”

“An idea that we’ve been bouncing around for awhile. We wanna see if you’re interested.” Dave appears over your shoulder, balancing a plate of fried fish in one hand and raw fish in the other. He sets your plate down in front of you, and –

The cubes are arranged into a smiley face. You look up at Dave. His own face is completely impassive, except – you think maybe the corner of his mouth twitched a bit.

“What.” He says. “Not a fan? I don’t do this kind of gourmet plating for just anyone you know.”

You look back down at the fish. Pick up a chunk with your fingers and slowly, slowly place it on your tongue.

Gods you forgot how good actual food tastes.

Before you know it you’ve wolfed down two-thirds of the plate while the two of them watch you closely. You cough, and sit back.

“What, uh. What’s this idea that you had?”

Dave sits down opposite Karkat. “You’re spawning.”

“…Yeah?”

“Got a few buns in the oven, so to speak. Ensuring the future of New-Earth-Alternia. Propogating trollkind.”

“No, they haven’t been – they aren’t, they won’t grow into anythin’. You know that.”

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about.” Karkat tips his chair forward onto its front legs, inching closer to you. “Feel free to dropkick me out of your hive if I’ve interpreted you wrong, but. You _want_ grubs, don’t you?”

You prod a fish cube around your plate. “Yeah. Not that it’s gonna happen anytime soon, but…yeah.”

“Well, that’s the thing.” Dave says around a mouthful of his own food. “Seadwellers raise grubs communally, right?”

“…Yeah?”

“What Dave is _trying_ to say,” Karkat interrupts, “is that Dave and I have been…thinking about you.”

“About me.”

“What would you say if we asked you to be our palemate?”

The piece of fish you just picked up falls out of your hand.

Palemate? For, for _them_? They want you to be…

“Me?”

“’Course you.”

“No, we meant the _other_ Eridan.” Karkat scoots his chair closer to you. The screeching noise of the legs across the floorboards makes you flinch, just a little. He reaches a hand out slowly, _so_ slowly, slowly enough that you know he’s giving you ample time to pull back or swat him away.

You don’t do either of those things. You track his progress with more focus than you think you’ve given to anything in literal sweeps, anticipating, waiting for –

You aren’t proud of the weak, high-pitched little noise that comes out of you when he cups your cheek in his palm. He’s so warm. It feels like you’ve just turned and looked up at the sun.

You don’t realize you’re leaning your whole weight into his hand until Dave reaches across the table to grip your shoulder, preventing you from overbalancing and tumbling onto the floor. “Dude, careful there.”

“I’m going to interpret your answer as a yes?” Karkat’s voice has taken on the breathy undertone that means he’s trying to refrain from purring. From _purring_. For _you_.

“ _Yes_ , yes, just…you’re sure?” You straighten up, feeling the contrast of the cool air hitting your cheek as if you’d taken ice to it. Dave’s hand remains on your shoulder, grounding you with the solid weight of it. “You know, I mean, I don’t know if I can…provide what you need. What you both need.”

“That’s fine.” Dave starts kneading at the part where you shoulder meets your neck with the sort of force that implies he’s done this sort of thing before. “You don’t have to think about that right now. Right now _we’re_ propositioning _you_.”

Gods, _gods_ , that sounds like something you’ve only ever heard in your dreams. But…

“But humans don’t even _do_ pale.”

Dave shrugs. “It’s not something I grew up with, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’ll need and what to expect in return.” He grins, just a little. “I’m learning from the expert, y’know.”

Karkat huffs out a teeny laugh that you immediately want to hear again. “If you’re worried about how Dave will fit into an arrangement like this, don’t be. He’s a fast learner.”

“In more ways than one, ba dum _tss_.”

“I just, hang on a sec.” You hold up both your hands. “I would be pale with…both ‘a you?”

“Only if you want.” Karkat leans forward and covers your hand in his. You try to hide the shudder that immediately ripples up your spine (gods, how long has it been since someone touched you like that?). “And I need you to understand that it’s _only_ if you want. If you’re considering it just because you want grubs, well. We can give you grubs, Eri, without the two of us attached to them, if that’s something you’d prefer.”

“No! No, no, I, I want it. Both ‘a you. _And_ grubs. What I mean is...”

“If you’re skeeved out by two palemates I can just chill,” Dave interjects. “I wouldn’t mind. We can be bros. The chillest of bros, chillin’ in a hot tub. Dare I say, best buds.”

“I’m not _skeeved out_ by it. Just…you won’t be jealous or anythin’? Of me or each other?”

“Maybe. Who knows.” Karkat squeezes your hand ( _fuck_ your traitorous body for shivering again). “If it happens, we’ll talk about it. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten all my advice on communication, Eri.”

You vaguely recall one drunken evening perigees ago, where Karkat had been absolutely smashed and ranting about how terrible the relationship dynamics had been in some show he had been watching. “Uh, no, I haven’t forgotten. Just….me?”

Dave groans. “ _Yes_ , you. Christ on a stick we’re gonna have to find you some self-esteem somewhere aren’t we.”

You feel yourself bristle on instinct, fins flaring out in indignation as you twist in your chair, pulling your hand free of Karkat’s to face Dave fully. “You don’t _have_ to do anything, if you’re suggestin’ that I’m not ready for somethin’ like this, or, or not _mature_ enough –”

A firm squeeze to the bend in your horn takes your breath away. Literally. You freeze, breath caught, before you feel every ounce of tension just ooze right out of you as you deflate like a balloon.

Karkat’s hands are warm, you already knew that. But on your horns? They feel like fuckin’ _magic_.

“Holy shit,” you squeak. Karkat doesn’t remove his hand, just scrapes the claw on his thumb back and forth while maintaining a solid grip.

“Shoosh, Eri.” Back ‘n forth, goes his thumb-claw. Back ‘n forth. Gods but you hadn’t realized how wound up you’d been until now. “We’re not implying anything like that. We want you as a palemate. _Both_ of us, because we care about you. We want to help you. We want you to be happy.”

“All we need is a yes or no, my dude.” Dave shifts closer to you and – _oh_ – takes hold of your other horn, doing the same motions as Karkat. You might just sink through the floor, you’re so relaxed and calm.

“Don’t think about what you can give us, or what you think we’d get out of it,” Karkat continues. “Think about what _you_ want.”

“What I…what I want?”

“What _you_ want,” he repeats. “It’s literally that simple.”

There’s no way it’s that simple. It _can’t_ be.

Everything you’ve been through, everything that you’ve done…and they’re just, just handing this to you?

You bat both of their hands off of your horns, immediately feeling the loss of the warm-fluffy-clouds feeling wrapping around your pan. You need, you need a second.

You look at Dave. You don’t know him as well as you do Karkat, but you know him. Know that he doesn’t make promises if he thinks he can’t keep them, know that he won’t say nice things he thinks you want to hear just to get you to respond a certain way. You trust him, you realize. You want to learn to trust him even more.

You slowly tilt your head to look over at Karkat. You _know_ him, better than you know anyone else. You might know him better than you know yourself, even. He’s _Karkat_ , he’s your best friend, your confidant, the one who dragged you out of the mud after everything. The one who set you straight when you hadn’t even realize what path you’d veered down.

You think about what it could be like, being pale with them. The both of them. What it might be like, knowing your place, where you stand between them. Knowing that you _belong_.

You look down at your lap and take a deep breath. Then another, just to make sure your voice doesn’t tremble when you open your mouth.

“I want you both,” you say, barely a whisper. “I want to be yours.”

You look up again. They’re both smiling, _really_ smiling.

Like those nine words made them so, so happy.

Like _you_ made them happy.

When they pull you in for an embrace you think that maybe, just maybe…you’re happy too. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lizard you sly dog. You think you can keep shelling out such good Eridan prompts and expect to get away with it? Your punishment is me flinging this at you at top speed. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!


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